OpenAI Begins Monetizing Sora AI Video Tool with Paid Credits and Future Cuts to Free Access OpenAI has initiated the first phase of monetizing its Sora AI video generation tool by selling extra credits to power users. The company is now offering additional video generations for a fee through Apple’s App Store, with a bundle of ten extra generations retailing for four dollars. This move comes as the company grapples with the high computational costs of running the service. Currently, users are allotted thirty free video generations per day, but OpenAI has signaled that this generous free tier is not sustainable. Bill Peebles, the head of OpenAI’s Sora team, confirmed the changes in a post on the social media platform X. Peebles stated that the current economic model is completely unsustainable due to high demand from power users. He explained that while the team believed thirty free generations per day would be sufficient, user engagement has far exceeded expectations. He was transparent about the future, noting that the number of free generations will eventually need to be reduced to manage growth and GPU resource constraints, promising the company would be open about these changes as they happen. In his post, Peebles outlined two main reasons for introducing paid credits. The first is the immediate economic pressure from high usage. The second part of the monetization strategy involves a future plan to allow rightsholders to license their copyrighted material. This could include artwork, characters, or personal likenesses. Peebles described a vision where copyright holders have the option to charge extra for cameo appearances of beloved characters and people within videos generated by Sora. This focus on a cameo feature arrives as OpenAI faces a lawsuit from the video shoutout company Cameo for alleged trademark infringement. The decision to build a core monetization feature around a concept currently under legal dispute is seen as a bold and risky maneuver. This is not the first controversy for the Sora tool. The service has been involved in a series of questionable actions, including suspending access after protests from artists, receiving a request from Japanese officials to avoid infringing on manga and anime content, and halting depictions of Martin Luther King Jr. following a request from his family. The introduction of paid credits and the planned cameo licensing model mark a new, commercially-focused chapter for Sora as OpenAI seeks to make the viral AI video generator a viable, long-term product.
